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Items of Interest Gathered Here and There
Holv Mines Are "Salted.”
The ways and means by which mines are salted
and disposed of to unsuspecting purchasers are
sometimes difficult of detection, even by experienced
mining engineers.
On this subject Howard W. Dubois says: uSalt
ing may take place in the mine itself previous to
examination, but this method involves considerable
expense. The cheapest and easiest method used is
to* salt the engineer’s samples, and the salting, so to
speak, of the engineer himself for a favorable report
is often possible by the financial inducements which
can be offered, in comparison with which the ordi
nary examination fee would look small.
“The books of mines are often fixed to show
good mill returns, whereas operations have been
carried on at a loss, and cases have been known
where gold ore has been purchased at twice its
real value, both for salting purposes and to give
a good product to the mine.”
Precious metal mines are those mostly selected
for the salter’s art, but cases have been known
where attempts have been made to salt iron mines.
It requires the greatest vigilance on the part of an
examining engineer to make sure he has not been
salted at one of the many opportunities presented.
—Exchange.
* H
Unib er sal Peace.
Action of the forces that are blending the nations
of earth is one of the interesting phenomena of the
times. Current manifestations are found in the
military, commercial and educational circles of inter
national life. One of the largest parties of touring
Japanese which has ever visited the country is
now crossing it from west to east and on around the
world. In Chicago its members have been for
mally entertained by the Chicago Association of
Commerce and with a cordiality and distinction
commanding surprise and admiration. At a period
when Japanese jingoism has been blustering a bit
these sixty merchants, bankers, manufacturers, etc.,
receive impressions in a friendly country which
surely make toward international good will and
reciprocity. Other manifestations of the sentiment
of “hands across the sea” appears in the announce
ment of the intention of the Illinois Manu
facturers’ Association to send a great trade
embassy to the Orient, and of the pur
pose of the University of Chicago to send a little
party of scholars and investigators to the Far East
to study the native psychology and in general the
underlying conditions of international trade and
reciprocal relations between educational institu
tions. Another emissary of brotherhood may prove
to be the American battleship fleet in its visit to
Japan. It is in the world of education that the
unification of man perhaps can be promoted with
the least obstacles and in the most pervasive and
lasting form. In the last few years this has been
suggested as a practicable process in the exchange
between the universities of Harvard, Yale and
Columbia, and the universities of Berlin and Paris.
Similiar exchanges have occurred between the
University of Chicago and centers of Russian educa
tion. The service means the visit of a distingvrffched
American educator to a European educational center
for lecturing purposes, and a similar benefit con
ferred by European professors upon this country.
President Hadley, of Yale, for instance, has just
returned from a visit of value and eclat to the Uni
versity of Berlin. But this exchange is not to be
confined to the higher diplomats of learning, so to
call them. A new and most interesting service is
now being established by the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching, Dr. Henry S.
Pritchett, president, 576 Fifth Ave., New York. The
new service calls for an exchange of teachers be
tween the United States and Prussia, the leading
kingdom of the German empire. The conditions of
the service are interesting, not exacting, and should
be widely known. It is necessary that an American
teacher, duly qualified, who wishes to spend a year
in Prussia teaching English by conversation, should
inform President Pritchett before June 15. Such
The Golden Age for April 23, 1908.
teacher must be a college graduate, he must have
taught at least one year, he must be reasonably
familiar with German, and he must be willing, as
above said, to teach English for one year in a Prus
sian high school or gymnasium, the latter being the
German characterization of an institution somewhat
corresponding with our public school. He must pay
his own traveling expenses, but a salary of $25
per month will pay necessary expenses in Germany.
—The Standard.
Playground Appropriations.
Whatever other changes the Senate may conclude
to make in the District appropriation bill as passed
by the House, it is to be earnestly hoped that the
amount asked for playgrounds will be put in. The
fact that it is only comparatively recently that the
inportance of play in child growth and education
has been recognized makes it all the more necessary
that the mistake should, so far as possible, be cor
rected and ample provision made for the future,
before the growth of the city makes it well-nigh
impossible.
The play instinct is one of the primal trails
characteristic of pretty much all the higher orders
of animal life. The little whales, if there ever are
little ones, play tag; the baby elephant gambols
till he becomes a heavy-weight, and nothing is
prettier than the graceful antics of the cubs of all
the carnivora as they chase and tumble over one
another in simulated hunts and mock combats. Colts,
calves, and lambs frisk and cavort about in the
exuberance of joyful life, and dogs all their lives
through play games with one another by the hour.
As for kittens, their life is one long romp between
intervals of sleep. One need not look far to dis
cover the wisdom of this instinct and the part it
plays in animal development. When young they,
of course, cannot hunt or provide for themselves,
but they must acquire the strength, vigilance, and
alertness that will enable them to do so, and to
that end nature has implanted in them the instinct
for play, which leads them to constant exercise and
to mimic contests, drawing out* and training the
very power that will enable them later to maintain
the struggle for existence.
The young of the genus homo have just the same
needs and are precisely similarly endowed with ref
erence to them. Flay for boys and girls, which has
been by many charged with their instruction grudg
ingly conceded to the smallest possible extent, and
regarded as a manifestation of childishness incon
sistent with serious aims, and a hindrance to educa
tion, is, as a matter of fact, of the utmost impor
tance —indeed, indispensable—to their proper train
ing. Which boy is most likely ,to succeed —the
one who grows up wholly bookish, narrow chested,
scrawny, and Miss Nancyish, or the boy who has
done even fairly well in his studies, played hard,
and developed a vigorous physique, and in the
sports and contests of his school days learned how
to be square and manly, and to give and take hard
knocks without whimpering? Or which girl is most
likely to turn out of use in the world —healthy, at
tractive, and fit to bear and care for children —the
rosy-cheeked, hearty one, who emulates her brother
in outdoor sports, or the one who never cares to
leave her desk or piano stool?
Aside from all this, it has dawned upon the
authorities of cities that the more playgrounds
there are, the fewer police courts, inebriate asylums,
and jails will be needed. With plenty of play room
and proper supervision, the boy gangs of cities
from which most of the criminals come, would cease
to exist. There is the boy nature, with its irresisti
ble propensity to play and its imperative need of
activity and contest, looking for some outlet; and
there is nothing but the gutters, and even in them
most games prohibited. Is it strange that they turn
to the saloons, and early become hoodlums, ruffians
and thieves? Suppose they had attractive play
ground, with some one to supervise and arrange
matches with other wards, and a boys’ clubhouse
for the long evenings. Our legislators are solicitous
for the welfare of the country. There is no way
in which they can promote it so surely and quickly
as by making a more favorable environment for the
rising generation of children and all who are to
come after them. The only real hope for improve
ment in any direction lies in reaching the children.
Not only should there' be no lot purchased in
the future without room enough for a playground,
but playgrounds should be speedily acquired for the
schools without them. Senators who live in the
country, or who were brought up there, where
children have enough space for play and free range
of fields and woods, will doubtless do all they can
to provide those who are so unfortunate as to have
to grow up in the city with what, at the best, must
be but a poor substitute for what country children
enjoy- The cost will come back soon in diminished
use for penal and corrective institutions.—The
Washington Post.
Journalism and Political Ambition.
Can an editor under any circumstances accept
public office? Such is the question put by Col.
George Harvey in his Bromley lecture at Yale Uni
versity March 11. His answer is in the negative.
If the editor does not free his mind from any
thought or hope of such preferment, the speaker
goes on to say, “his avowed purpose is not his
true one, his policy is one of deceit in pursuance of
an unannounced end; his guidance is untrust
worthy, his calling that of a teacher false to his
disciples for personal advantage, his conduct a
gross betrayal not only of public confidence,
but also of the faith of every true journalist jeal
ous of a profession which should be of the noblest
and farthest removed from base uses in the interest
of selfish men.” The speaker adduces the following
as the “one conceivable conclusion in logic or in
morals”:
“That true journalism and the polities that seeks
personal advancement are not and cannot be made
co-operative; from the radical difference in their
very natures and the impossibility of reconciling
what should be the idealism of the one with the
practicalism of the. other, they must be essentially
antagonistic. That in fact they are is evident. The
chief, if not indeed the sole, aim of the politician
is to win the favor of the majority. To achieve
this purpose he does not scruple; in the language of
his craft, he ‘keeps his ear to the ground,’ and the
magnitude of his success is measured by the shrewd
ness with which he divines popular tendencies
sufficiently in advance of their genera] manifesta
tion to appear to be the leader of a movement to
establish newly discovered principles rather than
as a skilful conjecturer of evanescent popular
whims. It follows necessarily that the journal
animated by other than a like motive, that is, the
desire to profit from pandering to mobilized selfish
ness, is so hateful to the aspiring politician that in
his view it must‘be discredited. Hence the fre
quency and virulence of assaults upon newspapers
which for one reason or another dissent from views
expressed by politicians, sometimes no doubt in
sincerity, but always in hope of currying public
favor. The reasoning of such a journal is seldom
combated; a mere questioning of its motives is
deemed and generally is found to be vastly more
efficacious. So it often happens in even these
enlightened days that a newspaper undergoing no
change in control may today be pronounced pa
triotic and devoted to the cause of the people and
tomorrow be denounced as a servant of special
interests and an enemy of the country, in precise
accord with its defense or criticism of political
measures and men.
“One of our most conspicuous statesmen —if the
term, despite its apparent obsoleteness, may still
be applied to the holder of a high public office—
recently declared that the sole mission of jour
nalism is to detect and encourage popular ten
dencies. In truth, such a conception is the basest
imaginable, but it is the politician’s and probably
always will be. Nor can we honestly deny that it is
the easier and likely to prove more profitable and
more comfortable.” —The Literary Digest.
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